Internet CultureIt’s hard to keep up with internet culture, but don’t worry: Each week we’ll tell you the best of what you need to know.It can no longer be ignored: Christmas is almost here, and it’s time to submit—to give yourself over to our uniquely American celebration of the day, in which religious sentiment and buying things become one. This week’s Out-of-Touch Adults’ Guide is all ‘bout that Christmas, with presents from TikTok, exploding glitter bombs, and a new holiday classic. But no PlayStation 5. Those things are sold out.
TikTok trend of the week: “Hot girl sh*t”
“Hot Girl Shit” is the Christmas gift we all needed. The TikTok trend originated with the great Megan Thee Stallion who famously said, “I can’t talk right now, I’m doing hot girl shit,” on her song “Girls in the Hood.” The TikTok videos that are getting all the plays and shares, though, feature their subjects doing the total opposite of what you might imagine as “hot girl shit.”
Like check out Riley Isaac shaving her belly, “All About that Bass” singer Meghan Trainor checking her glucose levels, Yoleenda Dong brushing her retainer, and Justina Valentine washing her dog’s butt. Not only is this a perfect set-up-to-punchline joke structure, this hashtag’s subversion of traditional gender roles adds about a million internet points. Spend the holidays looking at these videos.
This week in music: The biggest battlefront in the war on Christmas
The War on Christmas heats up this time every year on the bloody frontline of Billboard’s popular music charts, where normal songs battle against crusty holiday ditties for total streaming supremacy. This week, the top Billboard spot belongs to perennial Christmas warlord, Mariah Carey, whose tinselly earworm “All I Want for Christmas is You” is number one with a bullet.
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Number two, though, is the awesome “Mood” by 24kGoldn, a not-Christmas song that is actually good. Number three on the charts is a head-scratcher; for some reason, Brenda Lee’s, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” is the third most popular song in the country right now. Of all the Christmas songs, this one?
Close on Lee’s heels, though, is Arianna Grande’s “Position,” another non-holiday song. Filling out the top five, another truly horrible Christmas song, “Jingle Bell Rock” by Bobby Helms—are people not aware there’s an entire Motown Christmas album you could stream? I eagerly await the inevitable victory of secular music on December 26.
Viral video of the week: Glitter bombs vs. porch pirates
People love YouTube engineer Mark Rober’s holiday videos. His third annual holiday glitter bomb video—where he builds incredibly elaborate glitter bombs, disguises them as expensive gifts, then leaves them on porches to be stolen—has been viewed over eight million times in its first day online.
While I appreciate the over-engineering of the packages—they feature a custom circuit board controlling four canisters of fart-spray, a massive release of biodegradable glitter, flashing lights and sirens, sound clips from “Home Alone,” and four iPhone to record from all angles—and the victim reactions are hilarious, the overall exercise is troubling. Sure, people shouldn’t steal packages, but the number of video clips that feature children in them really makes you consider why people are stealing Christmas gifts to begin with—it’s hard out there right now, people.
I’m a bleeding heart, but maybe publicly humiliating anyone is bad, even if they do steal packages? I’m saying I have mixed feelings. But you do you, and let us know what you think in the comments.
This week in TV: Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey
You want to watch a good Christmas movie with your kid, right? But with so much Christmas dross produced every year, it’s hard to find one. What are you gonna do, comb through thousands of mawkish, insulting re-imaginings of Santa Claus’s origin story? Binge LifeTime’s endless array of cheap holiday-themed rom-coms?
You’d be forgiven for skipping the whole holiday thing, burning the Christmas presents, and going out for a pack of smokes and never coming home. Luckily, though, Netflix has come through this year with a holiday movie so good, it will keep you from a holiday-inspired cross-country crime spree. Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey is destined to join the ranks of watch-every-year holiday mainstays like It’s a Wonderful Life, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and Night of the Hunter.
This movie is Christmas. It jacks directly into your body’s Christmas gland, with its steampunk-meets-Dickens design, incredible musical numbers, and legitimately emotionally affecting holiday-magic story. Please watch this movie with your children.
This week in video games: The search for a PlayStation 5
If your kid wants a PS5 this year, you’d better get on it like yesterday. Sony’s game console is joining the likes of Cabbage Patch Doll, Tickle Me Elmo, and Furby on the list of Christmas toys that are so popular you can’t even get them.
In their quest for the elusive console, frantic parents, wives, boyfriends, and loners are camping out in front of their local GameStop, refreshing the websites of big box retailers a billion times, and committing daring, strong-arm robbery.
The feeding frenzy is part legitimate desire for a hot new tech item, but there’s another, darker, reason for the shortage. Game grinches are using bots to instantly buy out as many PlayStations as retailers make available, so they can re-sell them on eBay, sometimes for more than double the original retail price. While retailers say they’re doing what they can to combat the bot-buyers, legitimate customers are also turning to bots, because that’s literally the only way to get a PlayStation 5. Christmas time is awesome, am I right?
